


Not Without a Mess

by Fudgyokra



Series: BruDick Week 2020 [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Tarantula, Pre-Slash, Rape Aftermath, Secrets, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22274542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: Dick has known the identity of his soulmate since he was a child. It doesn't make life any easier.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne
Series: BruDick Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610485
Comments: 7
Kudos: 192
Collections: BruDick Week 2020





	Not Without a Mess

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1: Soulmates AU | ~~Caught in the Act~~
> 
> I wrote most of this in one go and then struggled to mold it for months. It may not be polished the way I’d like for it to be, but I’m glad I got the idea out of my head.
> 
> Title and lyrics from DREAMCAR's "[After I Confessed.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSHVAdG4uG8)"

_Oh, what’s the worst thing that could happen?_  
_Let me show you my own way._

Dick dreams of having a life that is pretty. Ever since the night his parents died, his own life has rarely been anything but unglamorous snippets, snapshots of abandonment in drab, somber gray. There are days when it seems like every particularly ugly moment comes from the soul mark on his skin: An intricate series of twists and flicks, looking as if it had been painted in watercolor. Sometimes, such as now, it burns like an old scar. He catches himself rubbing it, cool fingers working his lower back because it aches with what feels like the weight of the world.

Way back when, Mary’s nose had wrinkled when she saw the first bloom of it. _“It’s not an attractive spot for one of those, John.”_ His father waved her off, laughing. Dick learns to laugh about it, too, but it’s a recent development. _“Your soulmate tramp-stamp,”_ Roy had said. Dick remembers swatting Roy’s arm, where his own mark was purposefully covered over with tattoos. They don’t talk about it again. Even the fond times get ruined by the thing, a leak of morose nostalgia bleeding into all the things he has left.

His life isn’t pretty when he’s twenty, and he and Barbara fall in bed together. When she sees it, there are tears on her waterline, remaining stubbornly unshed while she traces its shape and tells him how it could match hers if it were just a bit different. That maybe they _are_ meant for each other, and maybe the symbolic halves don’t have to match up _exactly._ They both know she’s wrong before the thought is even finished.

It’s not pretty when he’s sixteen and injured, and Alfred has to doctor his back with salve in spite of all his complaints. Aged hands stop abruptly over the shape Dick knows is familiar to the man from a different body. He makes him promise not to tell, earning a disappointed frown in response that sits in the back of his memories to this day.

It is especially not pretty when he’s ten, and Bruce—who is not only fifteen years his senior, but expected by the public to be his father figure—pulls his armor off after patrol, giving the first glimpse of his soul mark, neatly imbued on his ribcage and visible even past all the bruises. Dick doesn’t have to stare long to know it’s a perfect match for his own. In fact, he thinks he can feel it before he even sees it. It is a sensation of inner fullness, of completion, before the inevitable guilt settles in. Bruce had given him a home and a purpose, which Dick can’t ruin by overstepping boundaries. It’s a tough choice to make, but he decides right then that acting on fate’s cruel fancy isn’t an option.

Still, the times in between are brilliant. Flying under the stars through Gotham, being part of something bigger—it makes him feel like there’s nothing he can’t do. They’re a team above all, through thick and thin.

And then the fight happens. It tears them apart for more than a year, all of it time that Dick loses by feeling uncharacteristically off-balance. College doesn’t work out. His job at the police department is better, but not perfect. Nowhere he runs is good enough, if only because he can’t shake the frustrating feeling something is missing.

He realizes with time that there are simply too many things unspoken between him and his mentor, even barring the obvious. So, when he returns home to the ghostly cold of the manor, he begins with the truth.

 _“You never bothered to call. It’s like you didn’t care.”_ He isn’t sure whether it’s a punishment or a reward when he finally gets to see all the pain Bruce had given him over the years mirrored back to him. For a little while it feels good to hurt him, just to know it was possible, but satisfaction gives way to guilt before long. _“I missed you. I want to know that my time here meant something.”_

_“Of course it did. I missed you, too.”_

Things begin to shift. Slowly, achingly.

A tenderness arises between them as the months go on, and before either of them know it, they’re older than they were when they began this whole thing. Not for the first time, Dick wonders if dancing around the issue of fate is helping either of them, but whenever he considers telling Bruce the truth, things interfere.

His life has never been _pretty,_ and he doesn’t expect it suddenly to grow wings or begin glittering in the sun. He also does not expect to meet Catalina Flores.

At age twenty-one, he kills a man in cold blood. Sure, he’s not the one who pulls the trigger, but he stands by while it happens, and in his head it is the same sin if not worse. He doesn’t stop a thing she does, not when she shoots, not when she pets his hair as he empties his stomach over the building’s edge, not when she pushes him to his back and climbs on top and tells him to _just relax,_ that she’ll take care of him.

Coming home after that is almost harder than the times before. Something isn’t right with him, Tim says; he has hardly eaten in days, Alfred says.

Catalina thinks she has done good, but all she has done is taken his head and screwed with the things inside. The worst part isn’t the physical, but the emotional damage. It’s the blip on the Bat-computer signifying a download from her case file that hurts, or perhaps it is the thing that comes after, when Bruce pulls the image and sees two mismatched soul marks stamped on a marriage license that never got to be. One of them belongs to Catalina, the other to Dick, and he knows which one Bruce is staring at.

“Dick,” the man says, “we need to talk.”

Of course they do.

“About Tarantula?”

A pause. Bruce does not turn from the onscreen image. “Yes,” he answers, and it’s a pitiful lie Dick wishes he wasn’t able to see through.

“I let her shoot Blockbuster. He’s dead because I broke our code.”

Bruce chooses to face him now. “There’s a difference between stopping a bullet and stepping in front of one.” He talks like the words _I would know_ were hanging right off his tongue, but he doesn’t say them and doesn’t need to, because Dick has gotten the picture well before now. Of course Bruce wouldn’t blame him for this, even though he wants him to. He craves disdain, or at least something that will push him away before one of them realizes this whole partnership was a mistake and—and he’s beginning to sound a lot like his mentor, after all this time.

“I can accept responsibility for my own actions. There’s no need to coddle me.”

“When have I ever done that?”

Well, he does have a point, Dick will admit. But: “Why try and talk me out of the way I’m feeling? I know for a fact you’d be doing the same if you were in my position. If someone had taken advantage of your hesitation, you’d blame yourself for being weak _._ For not being able to say _no._ ” He forgets for a moment that they are still talking about Blockbuster’s death.

Bruce’s eyes flicker to the screen and return to Dick’s face slightly narrowed, a gesture that makes him feel abruptly like he’s being interrogated. After a second, though, the expression softens, taking him off guard as much as the words, “And if I had felt that way, you would say the same thing to me that I am saying to you. It’s only natural that we want better for each other.”

Stunned by such a vulnerable truth, Dick remains silent, unable to think of a response that feels even halfway worthy.

Bruce doesn’t appear to mind, instead returning to the computer to close the damning image that must be burned into both of their brains by now. Dick almost wishes it could have remained a secret that haunted only himself, but he’s got too many of those now, and the thought of them festering doesn’t sit well in his stomach.

“Listen,” he says, earning back Bruce’s attention, “about my soul mark.” Idly, he fiddles with a bandage on his chest and uses the pull of new adhesive on his skin to ground himself. “I’ve known for a long time. That it matches yours, I mean. I know you know, now that you’ve seenit, but I didn’t want to tell you because…” Bruce stares at him with an unreadable expression, making this harder than it needs to be. “Well, because I was, er, _young._ ”

The corner of Bruce’s mouth twitches, which Dick thinks might have almost been a smile, and things start to feel even more confusing in his frazzled head. “I know,” Bruce says, stopping Dick’s flurry of thoughts in the space of a single second. “It would have been rather difficult for you _not_ to have seen mine in so many years.”

“And…”

“And vice-versa.”

“And you never said anything _because?_ ” Bruce’s withering look is an obvious answer. “Oh. Right.” Finally, Dick manages a smile. It’s small, crooked and unconvincing, but it’s a start. “I guess having a fifteen-year-old soulmate is a pretty bad look.” At that, Bruce’s expression goes completely sour, a sure sign this conversation is veering straight into the dirt.

The approaching crossroads is worrisome. On one hand, Dick has figured out that keeping secrets never did either of them any favors, and the hidden question that wants out so badly from behind his teeth probably ought to be spoken before he drowns in the intent of it. On the other hand, it’s also one of the few things he imagines can scare Bruce away—that insistent pull on his tongue, the weight of the words _Where do we go from here?_

Bruce’s melodramatic desertion of the platform in order to shower the night off is a welcome reprieve. The swoosh of his cape and the echo of his footfalls on the grated bridge are familiar famous last words. Those very same movements have been the last Dick saw before he’d run off in a haze of frustration many times before, which is how he can tell that this time, Bruce isn’t running, but beckoning. Dick isn’t running, either.

On vaguely unsteady legs, he rises, following the trail of discarded Kevlar and plate armor into the quickly steaming locker room. Although his wounds burn the closer he gets, like the mere suggestion of water aggravates them, he soldiers through the pain like he has always done. His soul mark burns, too, but he does not endure this one; rather, he sinks into it, a pleasant and all-encompassing heat that spreads from the mark down to his toes and up to his chest. The nearer he draws to the stall door, all fogged glass and fingerprints, the more the pain registers as a thrill of things long-awaited. Anticipatory.

Dick drops the last of his guards, clothing and facades alike, when he hooks his fingers into the handhold and slides the shower door open to let himself inside. “So,” he begins, “where _do_ we go from here?”

Now that they’re in a place free of cameras and Alfred’s savvy ears, Bruce looks a lot less sure of himself, but he still does not run. “Wherever you would like, I suppose.”

That opens a lot of doors. Dick’s memories are a film roll scrolling behind closed eyes, ticker tape of a more urgent persuasion, rolling too quickly for him to grasp onto any one idea that may help them here. For all the time he has spent imagining how to craft beauty out of pain, it has never occurred to him that the two could be separate. This doesn’t have to hurt.

He tentatively reaches for Bruce’s arm, fingertips brushing over skin with a crackle of sensation he doesn’t expect to be as blinding as it is. He wonders if Bruce feels it, too.

Bruce, who looks at him now like he expects something, but nothing Dick isn’t willing to give. There’s comfort in that, especially now. He isn’t going to lie about what happened, but he isn’t going to ruin this moment of peace for himself, either, and so he trails his hand across the expanse of Bruce’s chest, down to the lower part of his ribs. He touches the mark there until he swears he can feel it thrumming in his fingertips like a pulse, even so far away from the man’s heart.

They have plenty of time to talk about the past, he decides. For now, he takes the lead in the form of Bruce’s hand, gingerly leading it around the curve of his own side until the hint is received and a large, warm palm flattens almost possessively against the small of Dick’s back. Something inside him positively sings when the leverage is used to draw him closer.

“There are still things we need to discuss,” Bruce says, the apprehension in his voice muddled by something more intense, more present.

“Yeah,” Dick agrees, not without a tinge of mischief, “later.”

He casts his eyes down to the lines of Bruce’s soul mark, which he can see from in between his fanned fingers. The skin there prickles with goosebumps despite the hot water dripping in rivulets down them both, and Dick knows it’s from his touch alone. He thinks, with a sense of bone-deep satisfaction, that it makes a remarkably pretty picture.


End file.
